Civil Aviation Authority officials said the pilot of the domestic Sita Air flight was ordered to reverse the plane and make an emergency landing after he informed them his front engine had been hit by a bird and had stopped.

They had told him to start a second engine but the damaged engine caught fire, officials said. The pilot decided instead to try to land the plane in the nearby Monahara River where he thought the water might douse the flames but instead crashed into a football ground on the river bank.

The bird was not ingested into the engine, but struck the right hand side propeller. Officials said the impact shocked the pilot who became “nervous.”

Nepal-based journalist Thomas Bell said that "there were crowds of people looking at the crash site when I was there earlier and it crashed very close to a slum, shanty town, which is very close to the airport here.

"The people there were rather shocked and it was a narrow miss for them and it landed only about 50 yards from their houses."